Free Education

Getting a free quality education from the internet is possible. This article is a multipage second version of my original pagerank 7 page about getting a free online education. If you have additional quality information or links post a comment. If your College, University or textbooks host interactive content without requiring payed login post a comment with the links. Though these courses will not give you college credit at any particular university you get to learn from some of the best teachers in the world.

Educational Search Engine

#1 UC Berkeley

Ranked as the #1 public school in the United States, Berkeley offers podcasts and webcasts of amazing professors lecturing. Each course has an RSS feed so you can track each new lecture. For printable assignments and notes you can check the professors homepage, which is usually given in the first lecture or google his name. Even though the notes, homework and tests are not directly printed in the berkeley website, as they are in MIT and other courseware sites, it's not a problem to find them. I personally tried to use it for John Wawrzynek's machine structures class and the nutrition courses.

Getting The Most From Berkeley Webcasts

Berkeley Videos are in .rm format and real player can be a pain. It asks you to register real player, spawns on startup. Instead, download a free program called media player classic with the real alternative plugin. Media player classic is fully featured and much easier on the computers memory. The real alternative plugin download seems to come with an older version of media player classic, so updating media classic is optional.

#2 MIT Open Courseware

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is ranked 7th nationally in the United States. Many of the courses do not have video lectures. Instead, they have notes in PDF format along with tests and homework.

Getting the Most Out of MIT OCW

Since MIT OCW is heavily based on opening PDF files it's recommended you download FoxIt Reader, a freeware PDF reader that's many times faster than the bulky and slow adobe acrobat. Also Ghost Script in combination with GSView is able to read pdfs, and post scripts files.

#3 Carnegie Mellon's Open Learning Initiative

Carnegie Mellon is a private research university ranked equal with Berkeley. Though registration is not required they have a registered user mode that allows you to keep track of your scores and progress. Currently 11 courses are offered. The courses are basically ebooks in a frame-based easy to use navigation system with an occasional powerful interactive Java Applet for practice and testing.

#5 Tufts OpenCourseWare

#6 Openlearn

European site called Open University's OpenLearn supported by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Contains many online course and a different style content management system. I was unable to find anything interactive or any streaming media, though it does have forums for each course. Appears to function mostly as a large educational ebook library.

#7 JHSPH OCW

Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health offers health based lecture notes and assigments. You'll find the JHSPH OCW website uses the same content management system as MIT OCW. The notes are formatted much more cleanly but I haven't seen exams, and their search bar seems to be broken.

#8 Connexions

CNX.org is an open-content library of course materials developed by Rice University. It has a huge database of content which is very useful for people who know what they're looking for. It does have ebook style higher level courses courses you can choose from.

#10 University of Washington Computer Science & Engineering

Wikiversity

From the creators of wikipedia, Wikiversity describes itself as being a community seeking to create and use learning materials and activities. Wikibooks is also incredibly powerful already containing everything from a detailed guide to learning French to Organic Chemistry and Nanotechnology.

Other General Education Sites

The Power of Forums

Anytime you're looking for interactive help search for forums of the subject your looking for on google. There are millions of willing and helpful people that can help you. If you make the people feel you're coming off as just saying, "TEACH ME EVERYTHING", or "DO MY HOMEWORK, URRGENT ITS DUE TOMORROW", you won't be helped. I know it seems obvious but too many people do this, especially in Yahoo answers.

A Few Tips

Always show you made every effort and did your best in the essay or math problem you're asking for help with.

Be very specific and descriptive with what you do and don't understand and are loooking for as far as help.

Learning Math Online?

Not all sites use ugly notation and weird java applets to explain math problems. You can get help from friends and have fun at the same time using instant messengers that have "whiteboard" features like yahoo messenger and msn messenger. There's even Ajax Based Whiteboards which require only javascript. Search video sites like youtube and google video. Also search for animations on google. For example:

A Few Selected Forums

Finding The Textbook For OpenCourseWare Online

You could always buy used books from amazon or your local half priced books but many times the books are out of copyright and can be obtained free. Even if they're not, there are many free online textbooks created by volunteers that are just as effective. When the open courseware lectures tell you to do a homework from a textbook you don't have, search for the topic currently being discussed in the free textbook and work out all the practice problems you can.

Peer 2 Peer Networks

P2P networks such as Emule / Frostwire and torrent trackers such as Mininova and Ebook Share often host ebooks and online audio books. Some are out of copyright, but some are blatantly illegally redistributed, so beware. Try using Google Books to confirm a copyright).

GIMP Forums

If you want to learn to program, the internet is infinitely better than any university or any one text book you could find. There are insane amounts of tutorials and explanations in every way imaginable.

Google Searches To Learn Any Programming Language

(preg) Replace foo with the programming language you'd like to learn. Sorry this is so generic, but it holds true with any programming language you can imagine. I highly recommend learning python as a first language because it's flexible and closer to english than any other programming language I've seen. Many kids and teens often want to make their own games. I recommend Macromedia Flash for beginner game creators. For advanced tutorials try the Game Programming wiki.

List of foo Compilers

foo documentation

foo installation guide

site:wikipedia.org foo (check external links at bottom)

site:wikibooks.com foo

foo forums

foo installation guide

foo tutorials

foo step by step tutorials

foo beginner tutorials

foo getting started tutorials

foo FAQ

foo common problems

Foo ebook

foo ebooks

foo videos

learn foo

site:sourceforge.net foo

foo video tutorial

foo beginners guide

foo source code examples

foo source code

Search peer 2 peer networks, google video and youtube for tutorials and free media and tutorials. Arrange by shared/rating/viewcount to find the best of the best.

If You Get Stuck

Search the error you got on google

Check the Documenation

Ask in different programming forums, be sure to include the code as a text attachment or describe your problem VERY thouroughly. You can even try asking your questions in yahoo programmers chat, yahoo answers and wondir

Be persistent, programming is frustrating.

If you dont understand something in a tutorial search for another one that describes the same topic until you find one that explains things in a way you can understand

If you try to find a temporary code mentor for any given task in forums, express your ambitions of wanting to program without stating things to the effect of, "I just wanna start makin' loads of money" or, "TEACH ME EVERYTHING!!!". Be very specific about short term goals. Show them you use the documentation and have tried for a few hours. Show them what you've done, what you want to do, and what is stopping you from advancement.

Free Text Editors

Taking a music theory class is required to get a music major and most the focus is on interval identification. The real power is mastery in identification which can let you play songs by ear. Perfect pitch is NOT required for people to play songs completely by ear. Only relative pitch is needed.

GNU Solfege

Tons of features including interval training. Runs on both windows and linux.

Teoria 2.0.95

The Ear Training software is no longer being sold or distributed. It was a commercial product but the shareware version didn't have any restriction on how long you could use it. The only benefit of buying was added scores & statistics/user management. All the ear training parts of the program are completely functional.

This Ear Trainer 'Ere (Tete)

Note for Tete and Ear Toner

The Java based programs may need a javasound bank. I don't think they use your default midi software because java is OS independent. You may need to download soundbank-deluxe.gm or lesser to hear anything. The normal install directory for windows is:C:/Program Files/Java/YourJavaVersion/lib/audio

MultiTrack Recording and Editing Software

Audacity

I thought I should pop this in, since it's such a powerful software. Make your own songs with the freeware open source program, audacity.

Ear Plane

MusicTheory.net

Prolobe

Commerical Ear Training Software

Earmaster Pro (and Earmaster School)

This program is awesomeness. Even with all the amazing freeware programs this really is worth registering. It has a massive amount of features including a jazz ear trainer in a simple interface, despite only being 12mb. It is constantly updated, and multilingual.

Dolce

Ear Power

Intervallogic

$40 software for mac and windows. Pretty crummy interface and very few features.

Review of David Burge Relative Pitch Super Course

David Burge has a really gay voice that you have to listen to for 8 entire CDs. I hate this guy. He can talk for hours, about nothing. He can spend a CD telling you how powerful you would be, if only you had relative pitch/perfect pitch. He stops lessons for story telling time of boring anecdotes. David Burge just tells you to practice singing intervals over and over, and then gives you a little quiz on CD.

Save $389, their "list price", and just practice with a one of the freeware programs above. Sure throwing away $389 on a horrible program can get you motivated enough to send time practicing, but you won't improve anymore than just using the freeware. If he took out all the fluff his course would be 1 cd long with a short booklet of exercises. The rest of the stuff is pure hype to make the bloated price seem reasonable.

Jamey Aebersold

Haven't tried it, but he has a jazz eartraining course.

Small Ways to Help

It may be annoying for awhile bet set your default windows sounds to intervals. For example Major 7th for minimizing a window or Major 6th to Maximize it. If you constantly have your ipod on or are always playing music, find the intervals on your favorite songs. Slowly key out the melody on piano and count the half steps. It won't take long and it will be a permanent reference.

Software Piracy Freaks Take Note

Many of the above are available on p2p networks. Ear training software is annoying to pirate though because many of the companies release updates often, correcting all kinds of program problems from initial releases. What a pain it would feel like knowing the program you have has errors, and you're training with it!

Before you search your favorite serials, serialz, proggies, burned OEM, pirated direct downloads, crack, warez, demo cracks, torrents, keygen sites, or look for a "patch" for the latest software version, instead use the full version freeware programs. Most the time, the freeware is just way better.

Perfect Pitch

I have a lot to say, and a lot of resources collected on the subject. I'll devote another article about perfect pitch training.

From Wikipedia: Intervals of Songs

0: Unison: Happy Birthday To You (the two notes of "happy")

1: Minor second: Theme from Jaws

2: Major second: Frere Jacques, Happy Birthday

3: Minor third: Brahms' Lullaby, the Olympic Fanfare and Theme (heard as the first brass notes in the fanfare) which plays at the beginning of NBC Olympic broadcasts, Somewhere Out There, Greensleeves

6: Tritone: "Maria" and "Cool", from West Side Story,the theme from The Simpsons, or from Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath.

7: Perfect fifth: Also sprach Zarathustra (Strauss) (Theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey), Hey There, Georgie Girl, the theme from Chariots of Fire (before the main melody) or Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star (between the first and second twinkles)

8: Minor sixth: Scott Joplin's The Entertainer (Main theme after the intro), Across the Stars from Star Wars, or the theme from Love Story

9: Major sixth: My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean, or the NBC theme

10: Minor seventh: Somewhere, from West Side Story

11: Major seventh: a-Ha's Take On Me, or the first and third notes of Somewhere Over the Rainbow

I have a comment or Suggestion

Older Version

Manual

Getting Started

Click on one of the addition or multiplication text title's. It'll make the intro disappear. From there it says "Type 1 to Start".

Options

Automiss Off/On: Will automatically count the question as missed once your time expires. This is the only reason for having missed in the stats.Restart Level: Restarts the level.Hide Time: Hide the timer below the submit box.Hide Meter: Hide the moving blue bar under the submit box.Savestar On/Off: Your stars reflect your best time only. If off, your stars will be reevaluated per turn.

The arrows near the slowest and best time are to move slowest, best, and record times down or up. The Q is to organize by questions so you can check if you started slowing down or speeding up, and by how much.

Quick Keys

Clicking "e" in the submit box will restart the level and start the timer.

Speed addition

To add rapidly start from left to right.

Step 1: Add the first two numbers.Step 2: Glance if the next pair of numbers is greater than one, if it is, add one to the first pair, and write the remainder for the second pair. If it's less than zero just add straight downStep 3: Repeat step 2 until you run out of numbers.

Speed Multiplication

Double Digits

Step 1: Multiply the first two numbers together.Step 2: Cross multiply and add the Sums.Step 3: Multiply the last two digits.Step 4: Add the sums of each step.

Put This Video on Your Myspace or Blog:

Embed Code:

Speed Math Tricks

The following tips are taken from the book "Rapid Math Tricks and Tips" (c) 1992 by Edward H. Julius. The tips themselves are public domain and the author's direct explanation or examples are not used. This is not the full list of tricks. Mistakes listed here do not reflect the author of the book.

Multiply by .4, 4,40,400 etc

Simply double the number twice and adjust the decimal, because 2x2=4

Multiply by .8, 8, 80, 800 etc

Double it three times, because 8 is 2 x 2 x 2

Multiply by .5, 5, 50, 500 etc

Divide by two and adjust decimals, because 5=10/2

Square two digit numbers ending in 5

Multiply the tens digit by a whole number, then attach 25 to the end.

Multiply two digit numbers by .11, 11, 110, etc

Add the two digits your multiplying by 11 together and put their sum in the middle of the same two digits. 12*11=?, 1+2=3,solution 132

Multiply by .25,25,250, etc

Divide by four, and adjust the decimal. Because 2.5=10/4.

Divide by .25,25,250, etc

Multiply times 4 and adjust the decimal.

Multiply a one or two digit number by .99,99,990

Substract the number by one and call it value 1, then substract the number from 100 and call it value 2. Put the two values together.

Multiply a two digit number times .101,101,1010

Write the number twice and adjust the decimal. 64*101=6464

Rapidly Multiply .125,1.25 12.5 etc

Divide by 8, adjust decimals. Because 5/4 or (10/8) is 1.25.

Rapidly Divide .125,1.25 12.5 etc

Multiply 8, adjust decimals. Because 5/4 or (10/8) is 1.25.

Multiply by .9, 90, 900 etc

Multiply the value your multiplying times nine, time 10 instead. Take that solution and substract the value your multiplying times nine from it. 9 x 21, we say 10 x 21 =210-21=answer.

Rapidly Multiply by .12, 1.2, 12, 120 etc

Multiply times 10 and call it value 1, multiply times 2 and call it value 2. Add the solutions. 12 * 60= (10x60)600+(60*2)120

Multiply by 15

Multiply by 10 and get value 1, divide by 2 then multiply by 10 and get value two. 15*34 = (10x34)340+((34/2)*10)170

^ Top 10 Free Educational Software

Note that this list is mainly targetted towards windows users. That's not because I think windows is better, but it's because I know linux users already know this type of information ;).

#1 OpenOffice

Replace the bulky, unsecure bloatware called microsoft office with this freeware clone. Yes, if your computer crashes it makes save checkpoints every few seconds to recover data.

#2 7-zip

#3 Foxit Reader

Do you value time, sanity and a fast computer? Download foxit reader so you can download pdf files and read them instantly. Adobe acrobat frequently crashes and makes my fast computer sound like its grinding away while lagging horribly trying to process the monster program.

#5 HotKeyBind

#6 Media Player Classic

Used with plugins this is a fast light weight tool to watch all kinds of video formats. In recent years many hackers have targetted windows media player because of many glitches in the way it processes streaming media. MPC uses much less memory making it way faster for students who like multitasking.

#8 Emule / Frostwire / Azureus

The p2p trio can help get archived tutorials and instructional materials. P2P software CAN be educational. I found it very useful for learning french and finding sheet music (searching archives on emule). Be sure to check copyrigths before you download something =P. This combination of freeware is probably the most efficient.

#9 AntiVirus

This will help suppliment #8. Believe it or not there are now large and commercially competitive freeware antiviruses. For individual files you want to scan for viruses try Jotti Malware Scan and Virus Total.

Conclusion

It's usually best to learn from multiple sources when you're trying to learn something complicated. Search google for as many resources as you can and compile a list of resources before you get started. It should feel like you hit a brick wall if you get stuck learning a concept in one particular resources.

My Video Tutorial

Firefox Quick Keys

The only useful button in firefox is the tools button, otherwise everything else can be accessed with common quick keys

CTRL+T: New Tab

CTRL+B: Show Bookmarks

CTRL+U: View Source

CTRL+P: Print Page

CTRL+S: Save Page As

CTRL+D: Bookmark Current Page

F5: Reload

Backspace: Back button

CTRL+C: Edit -> Copy

CTRL+V: Edit Paste

CTRL+A: Select ALL

CTRL+W: Close Tab

The media manager, firefox forward button, stop button, and profile have no quick key, as far as I know.

Useful Tricks To Prevent Data Loss

While your writing in your favorite forum using firefox you can use several editing quick keys. CTRL+Z is undo, so if you accidently delete a paragraph, CTRL+Z becomes your best friend. Shift+CTRL+Z is a redo button, so if you write something and click ctrl+Z one too many times and it eats another paragraph, you can fix it all with Shift+CTRL+Z.

Before posting anything on a forum, add your post to the clipboard with an infinitely short but stress saving key combination. CTRL+A (select all) CTRL+C (copy). This way if your comp got unplugged or disconnected, or if the server just went down, you'll have a copy of your work that you can post again later (though rewriting almost always turns out a more elegant phrasing).

Download Themes

Remove Clutter

Right click your toolbar and click customize. Remove and add objects to take up less room. The firefox toolbar doesn't have to be bulky.

This is my ultra minimalist firefox setup with the navigations and bookmarks toolbar disabled (unchecked). I'm not saying you should do the same, but showing people that firefox can look clean and doesn't have to look bulky with tons of extensions. I have google spellcheck and google pagerank, which are incredibly useful. The back button has been removed since I can just click backspace, and so has the refresh button (F5). The rest of the buttons regular toolbar buttons have been removed, eg. file, edit, bookmarks, view with a userChrome.css hack that goes in C:/Documents and Settings/your name/Applicationdata/mozilla/profiles/somerandomfolder/chrome/. Renabling the default userChrome is easy though, just delete it.

Firefox Extensions

Many extensions cause memory leaks and make firefox more intolerable, but there really are some I can't live without like google toolbar for spellcheck and pagerank. Siteadvisor is great to protect new computer users from malware and customize google is really nifty. VideoDownloader is extremely useful for people who have fast connections and enjoy watching videos from youtube and google video.

Adblocking Extensions

Rather than adblock, adblock plus, filter.G and other ad blockers I heavily recommend the windows hosts blocker. Using a firefox extention makes firefox parse (scan) the code of each page you look at then remove the ads, this makes firefox more slow/unreliable especially with large pages and many tabs.

List of Best Firefox Extensions

Learn About RSS and Live Bookmarking

To open your bookmarks click ctrl+B, you're halfway there. Now learn about LiveBookmarks on FIrefox. Click the little RSS button and now everytime you check your bookmarks you'll see if there's anything new or interesting that's been posted on your favorite sites.

Disabling Some JavaScript Features

JavaScript is great but certain aspects of it are simply annoying. Sometimes script kiddies or idiots create really bad code resizing a window to 0x0. If the 0x0 window is closed last it saves that as your default window size and only lets you open firefox maximized unless you resize firefox with command line. Resizing, moving, and hiding stuff in anyway is very irritable. Editing the javascript settings and using the javascript features on tab mix plus can prevent frustrations.

I don't want...

People to resize my screen... ever

I don't want people to take away my toolbars

I like to see where I'm going in my status bar

I don't like blank or redirects.

Learn about Firefox Quick Searches

This is one of the most powerful tricks hardly anyone uses. Firefox quick seaches are easy to add. For example, go to imdb.com, right click their search engine, click add a keyword for this search, set the keyword as imdb... Now type "imdb Drunken Master" in the address bar. Viola, instant search.

What Quicksearches do you Have?

I have a lot actually, not that I ever use them often, but when I do I feel special.

Firefox JavaScripts

There's a lot of scriptlets available to do useful things. For example, on forms sites like Yahoo Main, Passport.com and others add features to prevent you from being able to save your passwords onto your browser (form autocomplete=1). To add it you have to drag it to bookmarks 0.o... that's where people get confused.

Setting FoxIt Reader to Replace Adobe Acrobat

Foxit pdf reader is much much faster at opening PDF documents. There's literally like PDF download extension that warns you "this file is a pdf document and will take ages to load, are you sure you want to open it!?". Just download FoxIt, uninstall adobe reader, then go to tools -> Options -> View & Edit actions, then set Foxit as default pdf reader for the MIME type PDF. No more worrying, waiting, and lost hair from adobe crashing the browser as it disgustingly tries to embed adobe into firefox on an accidently pdf click.

Prevent Firefox Crashes

Most of the time firefox will crash or hang because of memory leaks, meaning the memory used by the program will continue to grow and grow. There's no reason your firefox should be using 250mb of ram and 99% of the processor (check ctrl+alt+delete with windows or type "top" on linux command line).

Editing Firefox Configurations

To lower your firefox memory usage type about:config in the address bar. Search for and edit these values, if they dont exist, create them:

browser.cache.memory.capacity 4 to 8 mbconfig.trim_on_minimize Windows only, trim memory on minimizebrowser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers Amount of saved pages in the browser historybrowser.download.manager.retension set to 0 to clear download history after successful download

Personally I like disabling java which I reenable if I find an applet really worth the time. Java slows down the browser and eats a ton of memory. Closing the applet page does not release the memory. Run crescendo instead of quicktime as my default midi and mp3 player. For videos run media player classic with real player and quicktime alternative. Download media player classic last from the sourceforge page, because quicktime and real alternative have older versions.

Firefox Command Line Arguements

There's a list of command line arguments in MozillaZine and an official help page. Most people don't need to use this but it can be useful. For example if you have some kind of key or voice macro program, you can add a command line reference to open a new tab when you click or say something. Its main benefit is for developers and webmasters who use it to access consols to debug and inspect sites or firefox itself.

Consol Emulation

Emulation basically makes playing consol games possible on your computer. Read more about it on Wikipedia. Playing games can help me learn a languages? In respect to reading and grammar, absolutely. The old role playing games of the past are completely text dependent. Super nintendo games are mostly targetted because they are of small file size and there are many fan sites like emuverse and Snakeyes that offer translation patches in multiple languages for any game. Awesome titles include Super Mario RPG, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana 3, Star Ocean, Tales of Phantasia, Breath of Fire 1 and 2, Romance of the Three Kindgoms, Final Fantasy 2 - 5. Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced (EU) for GBA and Zelda: Majora's Mask for N64 are among many exceptions of other consols that have multilingual games.

Peer 2 Peer Networks

Beware of peer to peer networks. They can offer some great stuff but you have to check copyrights before you download anything because many of the programs may be illegally redistributed. For more about p2p networks check out my best peer to peer networks article.

BMI?

You can save the above BMI program by right clicking here and click save target as. BMI is intended for people who dont workout, have an average build, and are over 20 years old. There's a childrens BMI calculator on about.com. There's other calculators made more recently using other formulas to calculate ideal body weight.

Body Fat

Check your percent body fat with a doctor or trainer in a local university.